that. It’s supposed to. Always.”
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, Henry recited his usual lines with a little more bite, berated Alejo with a little more vigor. It was hard not to take it personally, and even when the rehearsals ended, something of this bad feeling lingered. The president and Alejo were two members of a troubled family, with a complicated, tense history; Nelson and Henry were two actors who barely knew each other. Patalarga tried to run interference, but it wasn’t easy. He suggested drinks at the Wembley one evening after rehearsal, but Nelson begged off. He proposed lunch the following day, but Henry arrived late. He organized a dinner of old Diciembre veterans, and the two actors spent the evening at opposite ends of the room, never interacting. And still: they were getting it, scene by scene; getting at the dark truth of it. The Idiot President could be an acidly funny farce about power, trickery, and violence, Patalarga told me. That much anyone knew. What he hadn’t realized until now was that it was also a painful statement about family.
There was a scene toward the end of the first act, when Henry is having his boots laced up by the servant. Patalarga is on his knees before the president. It’s an oddly intimate moment. “Rub my calves,” Henry’s character says, then confesses, “I’m sore from kicking my boy.”
The startled servant says nothing—the president is famously cruel, and he assumes this statement to be true. With downcast eyes, he kneads the president’s calves, while Henry exhales, relishing this impromptu massage. “In truth, I only dream of it,” the president says, and then pulls his leg away and kicks the servant in the chest. “But oh, how I dream!”
In early rehearsals (and in the original 1986 performances at the Olympic) this moment happened with Alejo offstage; in later versions, Henry wanted Nelson’s character there, hidden just a few steps behind the action, eavesdropping as his father daydreams about kicking him. This small change was, in part, a recognition of the realities of the tour that awaited: more likely than not, there would be no backstage (real or metaphorical) out in the hinterlands, when they were on the road. Still, it altered something, shifted the chemistry of the performance. They ran through it again and again one afternoon, and even set up mirrors so Henry could see Nelson’s reaction. Three, four, five times, he kicked poor Patalarga, all the while locking eyes with Nelson.
“Remember, I’m not kicking him, I’m kicking you!” Henry shouted.
On the sixth run-through, he missed Patalarga’s hands, and nearly took off the servant’s head. Patalarga threw himself out of harm’s way just in time. Everyone stopped. The theater was silent. Patalarga was splayed out on the stage, breathing hard.
“Okay,” he said, “that’s enough.”
Henry had gone pale. He apologized and helped Patalarga to his feet, almost falling down himself in the process. “I didn’t mean to, I …”
“It’s all right,” Patalarga said.
But Nelson couldn’t help thinking: if he’s kicking Alejo the whole time, why isn’t he apologizing to me?
For a moment the three of them stood, observing their reflections in the mirror, not quite sure what had just happened. Henry looked as if he might be sick; Patalarga, like a man who’d been kicked in the chest five times; Nelson, like a heartbroken child.
“Are you all right?” Henry said toward the mirror.
It was unclear whom he was asking.
IN THE FINAL WEEKS before they left the city, Henry began to jot down a few ideas. Notes. Dictums. Data points. Pages of them, from a man who had all but abandoned writing since his unexpected release from Collectors fourteen years before. Later, when we spoke, he shared these folios with me, apologetic, even embarrassed, as if they proved something about the ill-fated tour, or his state of mind in the days prior. I was unconvinced, but I scanned the pages anyway, trying to make sense of them.
A sampling:
Bus was twelve minutes late today, read a line scrawled on a page dated March 16, 2001. Reasons unknown and unknowable. Mystery. Could have driven.
Two days later: Woke to a serviceable erection at 7:00 a.m. Sat up in bed, turned on the light, to observe it. Watched it wilt, like time-lapse photography. My very own nature special. I should have been on television when I was young, before I was ugly. Slept awhile longer. Three eggs for breakfast. No coffee. Pants feeling tight in the thighs. A woman got in the cab today, black hair, asked if I would—
The following week: For seven months, I hardly talked about life outside. Except with Rogelio. Because he asked.
March 27: A play for Rogelio. Finally. A love story. A man learning to read in a rented jail cell. Being taught to read, in exchange for sex. A plainly capitalist transaction, between two men pretending to be in love. Perhaps they are. Awkward moments. Butter as lubricant, stolen from the commissary and warmed between their palms. Between their thumbs and two fingers. Strange that such a simple gesture could be so arousing. A woman got in my cab today, black hair, ruby lips. Asked if I would climb in the back and make love to her—
Then pages of lists: Dead things I’ve seen—telephones, lightbulbs, street corners, nightclubs. Also: pigs, painters, passengers, plays, presidents, prisoners …
On and on like this.
Was Henry losing it?
I don’t think so.
Or—perhaps.
Far worse things have been published as poetry and won awards; which is what I told him, in so many words, as I tried to hand the journal back. He wanted me to keep it. Correction: he insisted I keep it—as if the pages contained something toxic he wanted desperately to be rid of—and I obliged. The important thing for us to understand is this: Henry thought he was losing it, and it worried him. He entered the prison every night in his dreams, walked its dark hallways, inhaled its fetid air. He’d forgotten so many details about his time inside that it terrified him: the color of Rogelio’s eyes, for example. The number of the cell they shared on Block Seven. The meal they shared on the last night before his release.
But every afternoon, at every rehearsal, something struck him, some bit of the past emerging with surprising clarity. Henry began to remember, began to piece things together. This particular play, of the dozen or so he’d written, had special characteristics: it was the last one he’d finished, the one that had brought his career (such as it was) to a premature close. It had last been performed by men who’d died only a few months later, dead men who’d begun to appear in his dreams. Perhaps the script itself was cursed. These men, these ghosts, hovered about the stage at every rehearsal, sat in the ragged seats of the Olympic to critique every line of dialogue. They booed each poorly rehearsed scene, whispered their doubts in his ears. It was impossible not to feel unsteady when confronted with this text. After all, the man who wrote it had lived another life, and that life was gone. That’s what Henry was dealing with. Nelson, unfortunately, and through no fault of his own, had to watch this up close. It wasn’t pretty.
The kicking incident, for example, which Patalarga described so vividly—Henry recalled it too, answering all of my questions politely and without hesitation. He had experienced it this way: a feeling of looseness, a momentary disorientation. Anger. Impotence. Then, an image: in August 1986 he’d seen a man be kicked to death, or nearly to death, by a mob that formed unexpectedly at the door to Block Twelve. He and Rogelio had stood by, at first horrified, then simply frightened. Then, almost instantaneously, they’d accepted the logic of the attack: every victim was guilty of something. The chatter: What did he do? Who did he cross?
“Do you see what I mean?” Henry asked me.
I said that I did, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.